If you were wondering how long a walk around the Moon would take, find out that people throughout much of the history of human civilization believed that it was impossible to even reach the Moon. However, because of some efforts from a group of scientists who were very interested in this subject, we now have an answer to how long would it take to walk around the Moon. But before we start, we should also mention that because of low gravity conditions, walking around the Moon would require you to have the stamina of ultramarathon runners, so get ready!
How many steps would it take to walk to the Moon?
For starters, you may be underestimating the size of our Moon. Although it seems to be rather little, the Moon’s surface spans around 2,000 miles, which is the same as the United States from California to Florida in width. Our natural satellite seems quite small because it is around a quarter of a million miles from Earth.
So, you might wonder how many steps are there between you and Moon. Well, you need to travel 240,000 miles, which is equivalent to 1,267,200,000 feet or almost 15 billion inches. Quite a walk!
The maximum height that should be allowed for house steps is 7 3/4 inches. To reach that level, you should walk a total of 1,962,116,129 steps or about two billion stairs. Note that the distance between each step on a staircase is just 10 inches.
Therefore, the beginning of those steps would be located 310,000 miles to the side. You’d have to walk all the way to outer space just to get started climbing to the Moon! And when reaching your destination, you would wonder about the time needed to walk around the Moon.
At what speed can you travel on the Moon?
Orbital Today reports that Apollo astronauts could reach a walking speed of around 2.2 km (1.4 miles) per hour when on the Moon, which is approximately half an average walking speed on Earth. Such relatively slow walking speed is explained by considerably less ground traction when on the Moon because of lunar gravity. Next, the spacesuits astronauts used were not made for walking long distances and were rather bulky. And there were some experiments conducted in lunar conditions too, here on Earth.
NASA conducted research in 2014 to determine how quickly people might walk or run in a gravitational simulation of the Moon’s surface. We have no info so far if a lunar cycle or the solar activity on the Moon were considered, but we know that they tested eight people, three of whom were astronauts, and used a treadmill aboard a DC-9 airplane.
Test aircraft flew specific parabolic routes on Earth to imitate gravity that would be experienced on the Moon. All walking test trajectories were performed for 20 seconds each. The results of this experiment showed that a walking pace of up to 5.1 kilometers per hour (3.1 miles per hour) can be maintained before going for a run.
How long would it take to walk around the Moon?
It would take around 91 days to make a hypothetical walk around the Moon, which is 10,921 km (6,786 miles), or Moon’s circumference distance. And you would take this long by walking at a hypothetical maximum pace that the NASA experiment above indicated.
To put this hypothetical walk into context, it might take you about 334 days for a walk around our planet, and this is if you would continuously walk without pausing to eat or sleep. Earth’s circumference is around 40,075 km (24,901 miles), but there are also oceans, so walking around our planet is even tougher than walking on the Moon from many points of view, not to mention there’s the matter of spacesuits, which could slow you down, too.
For a moonwalk, any interested explorers would require a spacesuit with a design that is flexible enough to allow for maximum range of motion. Some space agencies are working on designing form-fitting suits making an arm swing, which is essential for walking on the Moon, possible. Spacesuits now in use were not designed for excessive movement.
Besides, the rugged landscape of the Moon would make finding a good path around it rather difficult, particularly considering that meteor craters go very deep. Since it is unlikely that a person could walk continuously for days and considering all factors mentioned above, the real-time required to walk around the Moon would be far longer than 91 days.
Wrapping it all up, a walk on the lunar surface would take quite some time and would require one to carry lots of supplies and equipment. So, perhaps it would be better to make the trip in a lunar lander without unnecessary heroics, would it not?
